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"If it's mine, it comes to me. If it's yours, you keep it and take three thousand from me to boot. I'll flip a coin with you!"

"Baby Devil!" laughed Standing softly. "Oh, Baby Devil, if your mamma could only see you now!"

"Are you on?" demanded Deveril, in a suppressed voice.

"On? With bells, Baby Devil! Heads or tails, and let her flicker!"

Lynette Brooke could catch only enough of all this to set her wondering. The two men were agreeing upon something, and all the while jeering at each other, and, though they checked their words and subdued their voices, anger was directing whatever they did or meant to do.

Both men were eager and tense. For both made of life a game of hazard. With Babe Deveril three thousand dollars, to be won or lost in the flicker of an eyelid, was a large sum of money; to Bruce Standing, a man of millions, it was no great thing. Yet neither of them was more tense and eager than the other. The game was the thing.

Automatically, perhaps subconsciously intending to have a free hand, since his rifle was still held in his left, Bruce Standing stuffed his spurned bank-notes into his pocket. But it was Deveril who, having conceived the idea, was first to produce a coin; a silver dollar, and mate to those other silver dollars which he had presented to the girl, Maria.